SDCC 2014: Guardians of the Galaxy 2 Already Announced For July 2017

Apparently Marvel Studios is already quite confident in their new franchise

James Gunn and Chris Pratt, the director and star of next week's new Marvel Studios movie Guardians of The Galaxy, showed up in a surprise video message at the end of the studio's (uncharacteristically uneventful) SDCC panel to announce that their feature has already landed a deal and date for a sequel: July 28, 2017.

Guardians, which features Pratt as the human leader of a group of alien outlaws drawn from obscure segments of the Marvel Comics continuity reluctantly uniting for a caper in deep space, had been considered a riskier than usual venture for the studio; which has previously stuck to well-known characters in an Earth-based setting. But the film has earned rave early reviews and is being tracked by analysts for a potentially huge opening weekend gross.

This makes Guardians of The Galaxy 2 the third film to be officially announced as part of Marvel's "Phase 3" slate, after Captain America 3 and Ant-Man. The studio has 7 remaining "untitled" slots currently claimed between now and 2019.